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Vasudeo Santu Gaitonde- Sonata of Solitude book cover, Courtesy Bodhana Arts and Research Foundation
Vasudeo Gaitondes maternal home, Bicholim, Goa. Image courtsey - Archives of Bodhana Arts and Research Foundation. Published in Vasudeo Santu Gaitonde - Sonata of Solitude, Bodhana Arts and Research Foundation Mumbai 2016
Vasudeo Gaitonde, Untitled, Oil on canvas, 55.25 x 40.12 in,1995. Image Courtesy - Christie's Images Limited
Vasudeo Gaitonde, Untitled, Ink on paper, 21.3 x 29 in,1962. Image Courtesy - Sotheby's
Vasudeo Gaitonde, Two Women, Water colour on paper, 11.2 x 11 in,1953 (published in Vasudeo Santu Gaitonde - Sonata of Solitude, Bodhana Arts and Research Foundation, Mumbai 2016) Collection - Tata Institute of Fundamental Research
Vasudeo Gaitonde, Two Sisters, Oil on canvas, 29.9 x 24.8 in,1955. Collection - The Chowdhury Family, ViennaMumbai. Photo credit - Florian Biber, Vienna
Vasudeo Gaitonde, Paintings no. 6, Oil on canvas, 44.9 x 39.9 in,1964 (published in Vasudeo Santu Gaitonde - Sonata of Solitude, Bodhana Arts and Research Foundation, Mumbai 2016) Collection - Tata Institute of Fundamental Research
Vasudeo Gaitonde, Black Princess, Oil on canvas pasted on board, 20 x 17 in,1952. Collection - Krishen Khanna. Image courtesy - Vadehra Art Gallery
Vasudeo Gaitonde (published in Vasudeo Santu Gaitonde - Sonata of Solitude, Bodhana Arts and Research Foundation, Mumbai 2016). Image courtesy - Kishori Das
(L-R) Vasudeo Gaitonde, Feroze Ranade, Unknown, Vishwas Yande at Sir J J School of Art, 15th August 1947 (published in Vasudeo Santu Gaitonde - Sonata of Solitude, Bodhana Arts and Research Foundation, Mumbai 2016). Photo credit - Vishwas Y
(L-R) Sunita Shrestha, Vasudeo Gaitonde, Sharon Lowen and Jehangir Nicholson. Image Courtsey- Sharon Lowen. Published in Vasudeo Santu Gaitonde - Sonata of Solitude, Bodhana Arts and Research Foundation Mumbai 2016
When the vitriolic art critic, Jonathan Jones recently rained on the parade of Bhupen Khakhar’s legendary pop-art-inspired paintings unveiled at London’s prestigious Tate Modern, he inadvertently betrayed a prevailing disinclination shared by certain Western institutions towards accepting and appreciating the pluralistic nature of the histories of modernist art. To their credit, South Asian institutions have been consistently jabbing at the post-colonial ceiling, liaising with museums abroad to instate into the so-called “cannon” the art historically significant contributions of pioneering local artists like Nasreen Mohammedi, thus challenging the widely held misconception of their work as derivative of Western artists.
Conceived of by artist and curator, Jesal Thacker, and published under the aegis of Bodhana Foundation—a research-based institution founded by her—Sonata of Solitude, the weighty 250-page publication, is another such ongoing monumental attempt at reimagining India’s modernist past. The book re-contextualises the aesthetic evolution of VS Gaitonde, one of India’s greatest abstractionists, revealing his artistic preoccupations as being in alignment with specific Western artists as opposed to being the consequence of their spellbinding influence. Thacker was irrevocably drawn to the Nagpur-born artist back in 1999, during her tenure as a student at the JJ School of Art of which Gaitonde was an alumnus. She was browsing through a catalogue primarily featuring figurative works for a class assignment, and stumbled across a “beautifully lustrous orange-yellow painting, with just textures and no forms or composition—just an application of colour. Translucent, it yet had a volume impregnated with formless textures.” Thacker felt this to be just the skin of the painting, cleverly disguising the meticulous layers of paint embedded within. Her account of this precious discovery, we learn through Meera Menezes’ ensuing biographical essay—the book’s crux— is in tandem with Gaitonde’s Zen Buddhist leanings and his internalisation of painting’s transcendental possibilities as espoused by Wassily Kandinsky’s historic treatise, Concerning the Spiritual in Art.
Menezes had met Gaitonde in 1997. She was surprised that the notoriously reclusive artist had agreed to meet her. “Perhaps it was my Goan-sounding surname,” she said over an email, referring to Gaitonde’s Goan heritage. “I found him forthcoming, charming, with an impish sense of humour—certainly not the dour, stern man I had expected to meet.” A decade later, Thacker, following a conversation with art critic Yashodhara Dalmia, approached Menezes to write a book on Gaitonde. “I needed no second invitation!” Menezes said. Years in the making, this publication could have been released when a suite of Gaitonde’s paintings were being exhibited at New York’s landmark, Guggenheim, curated by Sandhini Poddar. But Thacker wisely chose to wait instead as she continued building an archive, and enlisted the collaboration of the art historian Roger Denson, whose critical evaluation of Gaitonde’s process compelled her to imagine the publication as a continuing series with each volume squarely focusing on varied aspects of the artist’s career.
The first in this intended series, Sonata of Solitude offers an impressive and exciting foray into the life and times of Gaitonde. By rummaging through a treasure trove of oral and written histories, Menezes breathlessly recreates for the reader the Indian Modernist zeitgeist and the unique kinships that existed between the leading artists of the time, all of whom had one foot in the East and the other in the West, thus allowing for a delightfully syncretic visual articulation of their personal Modernist agendas. Menezes trawls through anecdotes, facts, and archives to demystify the mythic Gaitonde aura, and in doing so recreates a mesmeric portrait of the artist who embodied the philosophy of simultaneous being and non-being. Richly illustrated with letters, photographs, paintings, glimpses of old catalogues, and even a picture of Gaitonde’s astrological chart, the 12-part essay locates him within his social and artistic milieu as a figure in love with his solitude, at peace with himself, and unfettered by worldly success.
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